


The Smell of New Worlds

by Artemis1000



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Technology, Alien/Human Relationships, F/F, Falling In Love, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-07 20:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12240021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: Visiting Regulus IV with a scientific exchange program, Liz hopes to do her part to foster the delicate peace between their people. Nothing could have prepared her for just how alien this world is, or coming to care a lot more for her colleague Ziya than she had thought possible. But peace remains fragile...





	The Smell of New Worlds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cartographies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographies/gifts).



The first thing Liz noticed after stepping onto Regulan ground was that the air smelled differently here. There was a faint smell to the air which reminded her of cleaning supplies, it stuck to her tongue and made her nose itch unpleasantly.

It was funny, she knew everything about the composition of Regulan air and the injections it took for humans to be able to breathe it without taking harm, but she had never thought about such a simple, everyday thing as the smell being unpleasant.

She shook her head slightly to shake off these useless thoughts and took in her surroundings. There wasn’t a lot to see. She had read many vivid descriptions of the hub of activity that was the commercial spaceport in the capital of Regulus IV, the administrative center of the Regulan Conglomerate. It hosted hundreds of spaceships from all over the quadrant at any hour of the day and was a major cargo hub to boot.

The Terran ship which had delivered the group of 15 human scientists hadn’t landed at the main spaceport, but at an abandoned military port well outside the capital.

She let her gaze wander across the tarmac, invariably disappointed by the sight of the cracked tarmac and control tower of dried-out, crumbling biomass, trees dotting the horizon in the distance. They must be the giant ferns that were typical for the woods of Regulus IV, but at the distance, they were just green blobs that might as well have been regular old earth trees. Nothing here looked particularly alien, and Liz found her adventurous excitement wilting more with every moment.

At least there was a faint orange glow to the sky, a side effect of the planetary shields.

A group of five Regulans who had been waiting by a smaller planetary shuttle approached them. The woman at the front greeted them with an effusive and long-winded speech about scientific exchange building bridges between different cultures and the new era of peace and understanding this would bring about for their people.

The Terran journalists that had accompanied them were filming eagerly, but Liz noticed that there wasn’t a single Regulan journalist present. She might have put that down to security reasons, but they were being greeted by the head of the research institute they would be working at, not by the government officials who had signed the treaty and arranged for this exchange.

After the speech they found themselves unceremoniously whisked away in the shuttle, to be taken to their new workplace and home. It wasn’t even an organic ship like the ones the Regulans were known for. _Human-suited apartments, right on campus to ease the culture shock._ Or to keep them contained in one place where they could be easily supervised.

Liz studied the Regulans as covertly as she could. They, too, looked deceptively human. They had green skin covered with polished scales, for sure, but even with the uncanny snake eyes, they could have easily passed for Hollywood aliens that hid human actors beneath the make-up.

Liz’s hands tightened around the handle of her suitcase.

That had been the problem with the Regulans. Humanity had been fooled by their apparent familiarity. They hadn’t been prepared for just how alien the Regulans were. They had nearly died for this mistake.

 

If Liz had been hoping to catch a sight of the giant skyscrapers of Regulus’s cities or the space elevators that were the envy of the entire quadrant, she would have been disappointed. Fortunately, she hadn’t had any such expectations, not after the lukewarm reception at the spaceport.

The research institute was in the middle of nowhere, nothing but mossy hills and fern woods to see from the windows of the shuttle.

As soon as they stepped out of the shuttle, Liz stood transfixed anyway.

“This… this is more like it,” she breathed, dark eyes wide and full of wonder.

The buildings were neither particularly sprawling nor tall, this looked exactly like one of the smaller institutes Liz had worked at on earth, and yet…

“Finally feels like another world, huh?” Karim whispered, giving her a small nudge and a grin.

Liz just nodded, she couldn’t muster an answering grin.

The buildings were… there was no other way to say it but to say they looked alive. Vibrantly so, not like the near-dead control tower, the pearlescent walls of these buildings were moist with life and they moved ever so slightly like they were breathing, pulses of color shot through them as if a heart was pumping blood through their veins.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

Her stomach clenched. “Not like this,” she replied and hoped Karim wouldn’t ask any more questions.

It wasn’t a lie. They’d never been able to capture a building or even a ship alive, all they’d been working with were organic tissue samples. If they’d had this to work with, bioweapon research would have made a breakthrough before earth was on the brink of destruction.

 

Liz didn’t meet her alien colleagues until the next day, when they were sent to a lab more advanced than anything they had on earth, with technology so foreign she couldn’t even tell if she was currently frowning at a microscope or a garbage bin.

The entire room was made of the same organic mass which all Regulan buildings and ships were grown of, with odd outgrowths which might be worktables and instruments… or trash cans.

From the inside, the building seemed even more keenly alive, it was like you could feel its heartbeat.

“Overwhelmed?”

She turned around, looking right at aquamarine chest scales and looked higher into the slitted snake-like eyes of a female Regulan. She was regarding her coldly, her head slightly tilted in idle curiosity as if it were Liz who was the specimen under the microscope. She felt a shiver run down her spine.

It was easy to forget that Regulans were a predatory species.

From the corner of her eyes, Liz noticed that more Regulans had joined them in the lab, mingling more or less enthusiastically with the humans.

She didn’t dare look away for too long from the one in front of her. She swallowed hard and thrust out her hand, a smile sharp enough to cut glass forcing back her lips. “I’m Liz Patil, it’s nice to meet you.”

 _Never run away from a predator, it will think you are its prey_ , her mother had told her the last time they had spoken.

Liz knew she didn’t look intimidating, not like the Regulan did. She was just a short and thoroughly averagely built human woman in her late 30s, she would never be able to out-menace any aliens by sheer bodily strength alone.

The alien looked at her hand in puzzlement before grasping it in her own. Liz tried to ignore how small and breakable her hand looked in the Regulan’s, her own brown skin nearly invisible amidst fine green scales.

Then the Regulan released her, and it felt like she was shrinking right in front of her, not necessarily becoming smaller, just… Maybe she hadn’t ever been that much taller at all, though her unclothed body betrayed strong arms and long, lean legs. Maybe Liz would have called her beautiful, if she didn’t still feel so intimidated by her sheer presence.

The Regulan was still looking at her like she was a particularly interesting bug. “You can call me Ziya.”

Again, Liz had to swallow hard. “Is that your name?”

Ziya didn’t have eyebrows to arch, but she still managed the overall effect. “No. Most of my name is outside human hearing range.” She tilted her head to the other side. “Your species is very limited. It is fascinating.”

So would be stepping on her host’s foot, but she wasn’t going to do it because one of them had to act like an adult.

Liz kept that frozen smile. If Ziya thought her disdain would drive her to do something reckless, or that she didn’t know how to deal with disdain, she would be disappointed.

“Aren’t you a charming welcoming committee?” Still smiling. Just keep smiling. “Anyway, nobody has told us yet what we’ll be working on, I take it you’ve brought our first project?”

The political negotiators had remained frustratingly vague on the actual scientific side of their scientific exchange program. Nobody had wanted a historic peace treaty torpedoed by the finer details of a research project which was ultimately only relevant for existing at all. Thus, it had been left to the hosting institute to assign their guests as they saw fit.

The Regulans on earth would be working on the problems of agriculture on high-radiation worlds.

Nobody had bothered to tell the human contingent ahead of time what they would be working on. With their team consisting of a haphazard menagerie of STEM’s finest, there wasn’t even any way to deduce it from their fields of expertise.

Ziya’s silence struck Liz as strangely hesitant after all that intimidation, but she caught herself before Liz could decide if it had just been wishful thinking. “Let me show you around.”

 

Within the next hours of being showed around this lab and many others, Liz mostly learned her own limitations.

Regulan technology was alive, just like their buildings, and they were capable of connecting it with their own nervous system and body chemicals in a way which was well outside the range of anything human technology could replicate.

One of the other Regulan scientists spoke of interfaces they had ordered, but for the moment there wasn’t a whole lot the humans could do at all, being unable to operate the equipment.

“Of course, that would be more of a problem if we had anything to work on,” Liz huffed.

Ziya gave an elegant shrug.

There had never been a proper greeting or introduction, no speech, no nothing, just individual Regulans drifting among the humans, slipping into their midst as if they could pretend they had always been there and sharing droplets of information in mere passing.

Knowing that Regulans were connected to another much like they were to their technology, or rather, through it, Liz didn’t permit her annoyance to take hold. Unlike the alien-savvy director of their institute, the scientists wouldn’t understand that humans benefited from a more direct approach.

But this, this was a bigger issue, and she had every right to be annoyed.

“I understand we won’t be much use till you got us the control interfaces, but shouldn’t you at least be able to tell us what we will be working on?” She gave her a helpless look. “Anything? The vaguest idea?”

Shouldn’t someone in charge be telling them? But that wasn’t how Regulans worked, she was quickly realizing as every such question had been brushed off. Problem was, hell if she could figure out how they worked.

The look Ziya gave her was suspiciously pitying, but all she said was, “I’ll now take you to our biochemistry department.”

Liz’s shoulders slumped and she nodded defeat. After hours of being whisked through labs for fields of study she knew nothing about, they would at least finally be seeing something relevant to her own work.

 

Ziya, it turned out, was a biochemist like her. She had mostly worked in ship growth-related R&D – warships, Liz suspected, since she deflected every question about where she had worked or what she had done.

She remained a mystery to her, cold and disdainful of humans, yet she kept drifting back to Liz’s side and she had insisted that she had volunteered for this project.

After a while, Liz stopped asking. Might be she wasn’t the only one here who wasn’t comfortable with sharing her motivations for being here.

Even without the interfaces, there was enough to learn to keep them busy for a lifetime.

“I appreciate all you’re doing for me. But this is just busy work, isn’t it?” Liz asked after a week. She ran a hand through her short black hair and grimaced slightly at the damp feeling. It was humid and warm within the living buildings, leaving you always with the feeling of being slick with sweat even when you weren’t.

Ziya’s face was carefully blank and Liz congratulated herself on being able to tell the difference. Too bad it was a hollow victory. “No acquisition of new knowledge is wasted.”

Liz decided to take this as a yes.

She sighed heavily and looked at the instruments in exasperation. “I’m working with advanced alien technology on an alien planet, together with alien scientists from a people we were at war with a year ago. This should be a dream come true.” She sighed again, harsher this time, and rubbed her hands over her face. “What is wrong with me?”

“Is this one of your rhetoric questions?” Ziya asked mildly.

Liz shot her a disgruntled look from the corner of her eyes. It softened before she could let anything slip which she would later regret. “Sorry. I’m not mad at you. I appreciate what you’re doing for us, really. It’s just…”

“You had hoped for more.”

She nodded.

Ziya’s fingertips touched her shoulder, just a tentative gesture at first before she found her courage and squeezed her shoulder encouragingly. “I’m sorry.” It sounded genuine enough. “You haven’t been out of here yet. Would you like to see something different than these walls?”

“Are you kidding?!”

 

Liz had expected something like the fern forests, or maybe the fungi forests, but the landscape Ziya took her to was even stranger and more foreign than anything Liz had seen while she was reading up on her destination.

They landed at the edge of a patchwork pattern of ponds in countless shades of green, separated by crusty orange-yellow sediment which created a pattern that reminded Liz a little bit of the scales on her companion’s body.

It was unbearably hot and the fumes from the liquid made her eyes itch and ache.

“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” Ziya said, “would you like us to go somewhere else?”

“No!” Liz blurted out, then grinned sheepishly when she realized that she had sounded far more passionate than was reasonable. “This is the most otherworldly place I have ever seen. They have salt lakes on earth that come closest, but this is something altogether different. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Ziya’s alien eyes gleamed with pride and delight. “Good.”

She was beautiful. Not so much for her looks, though her alien body was beautiful in its own way, but for the love she held for science, for the passion they shared. She hadn’t even liked her, or humans, when they first met, and yet… Yet here they were.

“It’s beautiful.”

Ziya looked pleased. She dipped her toes into the emerald-green liquid, stirring it, and watched it start to steam and froth.

Liz smiled and basked in her happiness.

For a while, they walked amidst the lakes with barely a word spoken. There was no need for words, but Liz also found herself loathe to bring up the uncomfortable topic that could ruin their outing.

“You asked if we’re just keeping you busy with training,” Ziya stated suddenly.

Liz looked at her in surprise. Regulans weren’t big on bluntness, she’d learned that much in the last week. “I would be lying if I said I haven’t wondered.”

Whatever had driven Ziya to uncharacteristic frankness, it had passed already, for now she seemed hesitant again. “The circumstances…”

“It’s politics, isn’t it?”

Ziya wriggled her fingers in the Regulan counterpart of a nod.

Of course it would be politics.

“Our consensus has changed.”

Liz’s stomach felt tight all of a sudden and it had nothing to do with the fumes making her feel queasy, though they did. “Is there going to be another war?”

Another wriggle of her fingers, though this one came hesitantly. “There is no consensus to break the truce.” She looked at Liz and reached for her. This time, her fingers brushed over her hair. “Your people are not as powerful as mine. Yet we have made peace with them.”

Liz had studied neither history nor international relations, yet she could fill in the gaps. “It’s an embarrassment. Making peace is seen as weakness, and making war as strength.”

Ziya didn’t argue.

“Do you know why I wanted to be part of this project?”

“To work in labs more advanced than anything your species will achieve in your lifetime?”

“No… Well, yes. That, too.” Liz exhaled loudly. “But it’s not why I’m _here_. I could have applied to other projects on friendlier planets if it’d been that alone. Earth has several more advanced allies, and so does my home colony. My people might even join the Tritus Hegemony before the end of the decade. I could go home, regain my citizenship and then go study with scientist hives which have been going to outer space since before humans learned to plant crops. But it wouldn’t be working on your world, or with your people. It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Why?”

She gulped, looked down at the pond to avoid Ziya’s eyes. “I had been on earth for barely a year when the war began. I was quickly recruited by an arms company. I came to earth for its better opportunities to study and work with alien lifeforms. Instead, I spent all my time on earth studying how to kill aliens. I’m tired of thinking of new ways to destroy Regulans. I thought if I came here…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She glared at the seas. Her eyes were still stinging. “It’s not your fault I was naïve.”

Ziya’s fingers brushed against hers. Liz took her hand and held on tight.

 

Another week till the interfaces arrived. That meant training so intense that Liz forgot that they had been forgotten.

Earthers didn’t operate their computers with neural interfaces, everything that blurred the lines between biology and technology had been outlawed on earth after the Singularity War. The biological interfaces the scientist team was equipped with didn’t fall under the ban, but only for the reason that earth didn’t have the means to grow living, breathing machines like these.

For a while, there was no time for anything but the wonder of learning to be part of the network the Regulans accessed as a matter of course.

They only had to think for something to happen, and the thoughts of everyone who had connected with an instrument or a building lingered like a fingerprint, and you carried that collection of fingerprints within you, to share it with the next thing you connected with.

It was mind-boggling. Frightening, too, but Liz had always preferred to let herself be ruled by fascination than fear.

Ziya looked at her with pride and growing affection.

She could feel her in the lab they spent most of their time in, it was like Ziya was part of it, and now Liz was becoming part of it, too. She would remain part of it even after this peacemaking project had crashed and burned, and through everything she had touched and everyone else who had touched it since, she would forever be a part of Regulus IV.

She started to feel uncomfortable thinking of it as Regulus IV, the name humans had given it as they gave names to everything they discovered and sought to stake a claim on, regardless whether it already had a name.

The Regulans didn’t trust humans. They were alone in their heads and died with their bodies. They knew nothing greater than their own hubris, or so the Regulans believed.

Earth had suffered a lot of dead bodies in the war.

The news trickling in from earth weren’t encouraging. While the Regulans remained in a stalemate, with the science team finally choosing to pursue their own unofficial research projects, things seemed to be taking a turn for the worse on earth. The anniversary of the first attack was coming up, and protests against the peace agreement were turning increasingly violent.

“Are you frightened?” Ziya asked her as they wandered by the lake again.

They had no hesitation now to hold hands, though neither of them had dared to try more yet. Liz knew she feared finding out they were too different to make it work and she suspected Ziya feared the same.

“Aren’t you?”

They both knew they weren’t speaking of academic careers or research opportunities.

Neither of them needed to voice it out loud to know that yes, they were both scared.

Liz drew Ziya close, one hand at the small of her back, while her other hand cradled her cheek. “Do your people kiss?” she whispered.

“No. But you could show me.”

“I could.” She let another heartbeat pass and leaned in.

Ziya’s lips were dry and thin and covered in the tiniest of scales. She twitched in surprise when Liz’s tongue slipped into her mouth.

Ziya’s people did not kiss, as a rule, but everything between them broke the rules.

 

You could bend the rules, you could even break them, but life was unforgiving.

It was early the next morning, the scientists still bleary-eyed from having been dragged out of bed, that they were hauled back to the abandoned spaceport they had arrived on. The same earth ship that had brought them to Regulus IV was still waiting on the tarmac. It had never left.

Maybe neither government had been willing to bet on success.

“I’m not ready to give up;” Liz declared and stubbornly ignored the tears swimming in her eyes. She blinked against them and clenched her jaw.

The tarmac was crowded with humans being herded into the small ship by earth embassy guards and Regulan soldiers. They stood a little apart from everyone else, lost in their own world.

Regulans couldn’t cry. She was sure if they could, Ziya’s eyes would be glistening with tears, too. She had insisted on coming along and clung to her all the way to the spaceport, never mind the glares and hisses it earned her from their armed escorts.

“I’m not ready to give up either.”

“Then… what?”

They both faltered.

Liz hadn’t been told details, but there had been an _incident_ with the Regulan science team sent to earth, and now everybody was braced for the flames of war to be fanned anew.

“It doesn’t have to go wrong,” Liz said. “Maybe the peace will hold.” She brushed her fingertips over Ziya’s cheek, down her jaw and throat. “Maybe we’ll be back in a week or two and we’ll be laughing about this scare.”

“Maybe.”

One of the embassy’s guards approached them, she cleared her throat loudly. “Come on, Miss, enough of that. If we haven’t cleared Regulan orbit in an hour all bets are off.”

“But…”

The woman’s steely gaze left no room for buts.

Liz turned her gaze mournfully back to Ziya. No more delays now. She didn’t let herself think, just leaned close and kissed her again, just like she had at the lake. It was bizarre to think that had been just yesterday, it might as well have been a different lifetime.

“I’m not giving up,” she said once again. There would be ways, she told herself, for she had always been better at thinking about future solutions to her problems than dealing with the misery they caused her now. “There are many people who want peace. It’s not just us.”

Ziya nodded – a human nod, and then she kissed her again.

Liz kept holding on to the memory of that kiss when the guard tugged her away. She held onto it as she boarded the ship, destination earth.

The hatch closed behind Liz. She took a deep breath. The air on the ship smelled strange to her.


End file.
